Care is the invisible shaper of our individual and communal identities.

in Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, David Whyte

Humans are born with the need to be cared for and to care for others – encoded in our genes. Caring is a vital aspect of the basic need William Glasser named Love and Belonging. To satisfy this need, each of us must be participating in active, positive relationships with others, so the task of encouraging them to be involved with us is central to our lives.

Our Quality World pictures related to ‘caring’

We each have Quality World (QW) pictures of how we want people to care for us and also of the ‘caring person we want to be’.

Ideally these pictures are attainable – pictures that we can realistically match. Pictures we have of how we want others to care for us are not under our direct control. We can control only our own behaviour. We can only offer information about how we want to be cared for. By focusing on the picture of the ‘caring person we want to be’ we are choosing an attainable picture. We will all have such a picture – in varying degrees of detail. It would serve us well to spend some effort ensuring it is the picture we really want and re-examining it from time to time.

Underpinning beliefs

At the heart of our Quality World are our values and beliefs which inform our picture of the ‘caring person we want to be’. Dr Glasser described three beliefs of traditional ‘external control’ psychology. In Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom, he explains the second and third beliefs this way:

Second Belief: I can make other people do what I want even if they do not want to do it. And other people can control how I think, act and feel.

Third Belief: It is right, it is even my moral obligation to ridicule, threaten, or punish those who don’t do what I tell them to do or even reward them if it will get them to do what I want.

It is clear that the disconnecting habits follow from these beliefs, and that they are extremely harmful to relationships.

A person with the above beliefs could conceivably form a Quality World picture of themselves as a caring person who demonstrates their care through what they see as necessary coercion – using the disconnecting habits. My view is that these habits are highly destructive of relationships and the term ‘disconnecting’ though true does not quite capture this. Glasser’s word ‘deadly’ is apt, but in Australian Aboriginal culture this term has the opposite meaning. From this point I will use ‘Destructive’ Habits.

Attempts to match our pictures

We attempt to satisfy our pictures by choosing, either consciously or unconsciously, particular behaviours. Such behaviours are termed effective if they satisfy our needs through matching our Quality World pictures. They are responsible behaviours if they also allow others to meet their needs. 

Because many of us have grown up in world dominated by a belief system based on external control thinking, common behaviours we choose in our interactions with those we care about are criticising, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing and rewarding (to control). These behaviours are neither responsible nor effective. From personal experience, I expect we would agree with Dr Glasser that these behaviours are always destructive of relationships and that by replacing them with what he named the Caring Habits, each of us can get along better with the people we want to be close to. He listed accepting, listening, respecting, trusting, encouraging, supporting and negotiating differences. What do we understand by each of these?

Exploring our understanding of the Caring Habits

Rather than offering my interpretations of the meaning of each of the Caring/Connecting habits, I invite you to explore your own experience through self-evaluation questions, with the intent that your reflections are more personally relevant.

ACCEPTING

When or where do you feel completely accepted? How important is this to you?

When is acceptance towards others a challenge?

What has stopped you in the past from accepting a situation?

How does accepting help any relationship?

LISTENING

When people are really listening to you, what is that like?

What was it like when someone refused to listen to you?

Are you a good listener? What can you do to improve your listening skills? How would it help?

RESPECTING

When others are respecting you, what are they doing? Does this respect influence your choices?

What would your thinking be when you are not being respected?

How do you show respect to people you come into contact with?

TRUSTING

It is often said that trust is the opposite of fear. What do you think is the reasoning behind that statement?

How important is it to trust ourselves? What do we need to do to trust ourselves more?

How does trust help our relationships with others or with ourselves?

ENCOURAGING

Can you remember when someone encouraged you? How did this change your way of thinking about a situation?

What is the underlying message to the person you are encouraging? How do you think this message could help that person? 

How is encouragement different from praise?

SUPPORTING

What is your definition of supporting another person? How does supporting differ from rescuing?

Has someone ever supported you and if so, how did it help you?

Is supporting an important tool when relating to the people you care about in your life?

NEGOTIATING

What does it mean when two or more parties negotiate? What is happening?

Have you ever been in a situation in which you practised the skill of negotiating?

What kind of skills do people need when they negotiate? What do you think they need to avoid in order to be successful?

Choosing the Caring Habits in ‘real time’

It seems an obvious choice when we want to strengthen our relationships – use the Caring Habits! This is a simple idea, but as Dr Glasser himself said, “Just because an idea is simple, doesn’t mean it is easy”! We all know from experience that we don’t always make that choice.

Imagine we have learnt about Choice Theory. We have plenty of information that a Caring Habit will be a helpful choice. We value it. We have Quality World pictures grounded our belief in internal control and in the fundamental importance of strong relationships. We have used the Caring Habits before – they are organised behaviours. However, in a moment of frustration when we are not getting something we want, our ‘scales are tipped’ we will tend to go back to previous organised behaviours – in this case, the Destructive Habits we’ve practised since childhood. The higher the level of frustration, the more likely we will revert to these.

Let’s imagine we want to be supportive and respectful to our partner, but they have been shopping again and spent way over budget! Instantly another Quality World picture opens up for us – a picture of a healthy bank balance ‘lands on our scales’! It is definitely not matched by ‘what we perceive we’ve got’ – less money. We shout in annoyance at our partner! It can be a challenge can be to keep our picture of ‘the caring person I want to be’ firmly ‘on our scales’, so that this is the picture we are attempting to match.

As a starting point in increasing our capability to make a conscious choice of behaviour, Glasser suggested we ask ourselves what my friend calls the Golden Question:

“Is what I am about to do or say going to bring us closer together or drive us further apart?”

This self-evaluation question requires us to reinstate the ‘caring person I want to be’ picture on our scales. We pause and re-evaluate, creating a space to make the better choice. I have a colleague who believes that practicing this question was the turning point in her relationship with her daughter.

We could reword this question in many ways. Choose what makes sense to you. A few suggestions follow.

“Right now, am I being the person I want to be in this relationship?”

“Will what I am doing or thinking help bring me closer to the relationship I want with this person?”

“Will what I am about to say do harm to our relationship or improve it?”

“Do I want to be right or connected?”

Care for ourselves

The preceding discussion has been focused on our relationships with others. All the above ideas are relevant to our relationship with ourselves. Perhaps that is where we could begin – by accepting, listening, respecting, trusting, supporting, encouraging and even negotiating with, ourselves. Some would see these as ‘different sides of the same coin’.

Equally, the destructive power of external control thinking applies to our relationship with ourselves.

Can we not ask ourselves essentially the same question?

“If I think or do or say this right now, am I being the self-caring person I really want to be?”